


Wet Thursday Afternoon

by ljs



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been twenty years, but Tegan hasn't forgotten.</p><p>For Paratti's birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wet Thursday Afternoon

It's been twenty years, but Tegan always thinks of the Doctor when she walks through the Antiques Centre in Brisbane. Something about the jumble of histories and the odds and ends from travellers long gone, perhaps. She only knows that on wet afternoons she finds herself drawn to what's been left behind. 

On this particular wet Thursday afternoon, in this particular vintage-clothing stall, her heartbeat trips faster when she sees a particular coat sleeve on the rack. Her fingers know the texture even before she touches it and pulls it out into the light. 

Yes. It's a cricketer's frock coat, cream-colour and then stripes, bright despite what must be its age.

She's felt the weight of a coat like this –a bitter night on a faraway planet, and a slightly testy Time Lord shrugging out of his top layer, saying, “Right, Tegan, I _will_ take care of you, do stop jawing at me.” He'd draped his coat around her, then left his hands on her shoulders. “Better?”

She'd snuggled into the warmth of coat and hands, and said, “Better, Doctor.” And they'd smiled at each other, there in that bitter night, alone for just a moment in the midst of mayhem and the madness only the Doctor could inspire. 

The Antiques Centre is a place for jumbled history, she thinks now, and she pulls now this coat off its hanger and shrugs into it in order to feel that old moment more deeply. The coat is big on her, just as his was, and –

Hang on. Just hang on. It's been twenty years, but she knows this smell. It's rain after a dry forever, it's tea and grass and something alien she'd never been able to pin down. 

Her fingers go to the coat's lapels. Just here, small holes where someone might pin a bloody ridiculous stalk of celery –

“What the devil?” she mutters.

And then she hears it. A crowd noise, but under it a familiar hum, a shiver in the barrier that usually separates one time from another. It's nearby, not exactly here but here all the same–

“Sorry, sorry,” she says to the startled clerk behind the counter, and throws enough money for the coat in his general direction, and runs out into the centre, the cream and stripes flapping as she goes.

Down there at the entrance, a crowd of people push at each other. Tegan sees a green tentacle or two waving, no, striking above the crowd, and then there's a blaster shot, and then a floppy-haired, bow-tied, bow-legged young man and a competent-looking woman in dungarees and leather burst from the heart of the melee. They're heading straight for her. 

Three steps away, the man beams. “Good show, Tegan, you found it! I'd misplaced your address--”

“And your psychic paper,” the woman says dryly to him, “which makes slight criminal mischief so difficult.”

“You may shout at me later, River, although it's really your fault,” the man says impatiently. “Anyway, Tegan, I was wondering if you might have a few moments for a very small adventure, just a jaunt, really, sub rosa as it were because the multiverse really doesn't know I'm still around --”

“Doctor,” Tegan says, and she wraps the coat around her a bit more tightly to keep in her excitement. “What are you on about now?”

“Oh, Tegan,” says the Doctor fondly, and the woman – River? – says, “Perfect! I'm so happy to meet you, Tegan Jovanka. Because of you giving him a taste for mouthy women, there was Donna, and us Pond women too.” She kisses Tegan's cheek, and Tegan smells old smoke and musky perfume and just a hint of that something alien just before River takes her hand. “If you come with us now, I promise I'll get you back to the right place and time. I'm driving, you see.”

“Yes yes yes, River,” the Doctor snaps, and then, “Well, come on then! No time to chat, I'm not supposed to be here!”

Behind them, the crowd surges forward. Without knowing how it happens, Tegan finds herself running between the Doctor and River, running toward that familiar hum, the shiver in the barrier that separates one time to another.

It is a wet Thursday afternoon in Brisbane, and his coat is warm, and she might as well run.


End file.
